Sarah has her grandfather’s carpenter’s rule out, an old yardstick-looking thing with the brass hinges and wooden rulers all attached, like an accordian.

She has it extended four rulers. Thirty-three inches total.

The object of her exploration with the rule is a smush on the wall above the fireplace. Something organic. There’s definitely a tail protruding from a blob, which has a greenish-blue sheen - almost like if you superimposed algae onto an oil slick and swirled it. We have no idea how it got there, or how it came to be squished.

“Just stop.”

Sarah retreats to the couch and sits crossed-legged in a defiant pout. She’s waving the carpenter’s rule in a circle like a wand. I carefully slide my head into her lap, throw my legs over the couch arm and disarm her from the rule. I am quiet and careful to fold it back together, and wipe the poke-end in the cuff of my Levis. I slide the rule under the couch for a later retrieval and relocation to the toolbox.

“What do you think it is - was?”

“I dunno. Bug of some kind.”

We retreat into silence. A space we’ve come to occupy with relative frequency.

She puts her palms on my temples, then rakes the hair from my eyes with her fingers. With an index finger, she traces the bridge of my nose, my cheekbones, my lips. She smiles as she does this; I reach out, put my hands on her ribcage and give a gentle squeeze. She sighs.

She’s leans in for a kiss when we hear something. Wet, like a sploosh combined with a plop. Our thing has detached itself and now rests on the stone fireplace mantel.

“I’ll get some paper towels.”

“Leave it.”

She gently pulls my head back into her lap and continues to trace her finger across my features. I close my eyes.

“When I said we never talk anymore, I didn’t mean it to come out as an accusation or anything.”

“I know.”

“We used to talk about everything - I mean, I know it was new and we were getting to know each-other, but I miss you. I miss just hearing what you have to say. That’s why I ask so many questions. That’s why I ask you every morning about what I’m wearing, it’s not that I’m confused or anything. I want your opinion.”

I open my eyes. I look into hers. And I smile. She fills the dimple in my cheek with her finger.

There’s a comfort between us. Whether that comes with age or proximity, I couldn’t say. I know she doesn’t enjoy it. I can’t say I enjoy it either.

So, yeah, this is like the first new flash fiction in months. I hope you like it.

Making Ends Meet

She lives in the space between the here and there.

She floats along, grasps at false hopes and tempered dreams;
she places small bets on the purchase of Glocks vs. the instincts of simple prayer.
And in this space, there’s sometimes desolation and despair. The chafing
between the haves and the have-nots.

Border town.

She sucks electricity illegally from the utility pole that’s
next to an Airbnb Airstream, where faint whispers of conscience of what she’s
doing to make ends meet are muddled with the windmill-attacking dedication to
the truly downtrodden. She feeds her neighbor’s dog, which is chained to a
nearly dead mesquite tree, illegally over the fence. The guy she shares the fence with is probation officer; he’s already called the sheriff on her three times. Yet she documents the animal’s cruelty on her cell phone.

The borrowed bold cutters and calls to a no-kill shelter the
next county over means she’ll be moving soon. Again.

She makes $11.50 an hour waiting tables at a fancy stop on
the foodie trail – a place where her own creeping morality could never afford.
A novice in the ranks of the true guerrilla extremists in the food service
industry, she mainly picks her nose and touches the pan-seared duck breast with
fresh blueberry compote, or the date pudding with the caramelized rum sauce. She
smiles as she does this, and again when she goes to ask how everything is
tasting and the foodies oooohhhh and aaaaahhh and Instagram the event like it’s
a baptism. Blissful ignorance, yes, but it’s the least she can do to help stick
it to The Man – or at the very least, try and make some sense of the
absurdities of life today.

It’s a living. She has a calling. Misdirected as it is some
days. It is an ethos.

My Three Word Wednesday contribution (and my first flash in months). Your opinions matter.Sins of the Father

The waitress is especially chatty and you lie of course and
say you’re on holiday because that’s what people who come here, come here to do.
They arrive for the fresh mountain air and the trout fishing and hiking. Or they
come in hunter orange over cammo in the fall to chase big game, like elk and
moose and antelope.

You’re certainly here during our down time, the waitress
says. There’s not much to do right now on account of the unpredictable weather.
She smiles and does a mock shiver, which sloshes dark coffee around the round
glass carafe in her hand.

The quiet suits me, you say, remembering that you need to be
respectful, just not memorable.

That’s why your clothing is from thrift stores, and the
smell of other lives hangs on you like fried meat. Because you don’t want to stick
out. You need to blend in. Be downright ordinary.

You finish your coffee and the tip isn’t extravagant,
standard 20 percent on a tab of $11.67 for the bison burger and coffee. You
pay with cash, and you leave a $10 and four singles under your half-empty
coffee mug that you discreetly wiped off your lip marks and fingerprints with
your napkin.

You look both ways as you cross the street, then walk all
the way around the nondescript rental car, a late-model domestic so as not to
attract undue attention, making sure that there’s nothing out of the ordinary
that would alert the cops to a traffic stop. You start the engine, turn on the
lights and make a sweep around the car again.

Just in case. Just to be safe.

There’s a sharp thump from the trunk. And another. You grind
your teeth across your chapped lower lip, taste the faint flavor of blood and
let a slight smile loose, until you regain complete composure and check your
mirrors, turn on your turn signal and ease into traffic.

The hole was dug the night before. With the help from your
college roommate who lives in this part of the state. A guy with a backhoe and a
side business of installing septic systems for people who buy land and build
cabins next to U.S. Forest Service boundaries. A guy with three daughters of
his very own.

There’s a duffle bag in the backseat, one of those sports
models, blue canvas with white handles. Inside there’s a change of clothing
(again, thrift store finds, gently used) and a wooden baseball bat. A Louisville
Slugger 180 model, 32 inches long, made of ash, retailing for $24.99 plus tax
(and which you paid cash, naturally).

The young sales clerk in the green shirt at the big-box
retailer (in an adjacent state, of course) kept trying to steer you to the
aluminum models, the kind that start at $200, saying that you’re son would be
better off learning to hit with power early. You don’t disagree, but you’re softly
adamant that you’re son will learn the joys of wood, the satisfying “crack”
when ash makes contact with cowhide. He laughs and says he understands the
desire, the need to stick with the classics.

(And besides, you can’t quite imagine what the hollow ding
of an aluminum bat making contact will do to your resolve.)

You make a slow, 360-degree turn before putting the key into
the trunk and pop it open. His eyes try to focus, adjust to the falling dusk.
Fresh bruises have sprouted around his eye sockets. You don’t quite remember
inflicting those. You shrug. He wilts back into the depths of the trunk before
violently bobbing back up again, face flush red.

He pleads around cotton gauze and black duct tape, eyes
wide, nostrils flaring. You neither care, nor respond. You don’t really even
notice as you heft his body out of the trunk and onto the hardscrabble
backcountry road.

Even in latex gloves, there’s no sweat our your palms. There’s
a breeze, and considering the month it’s bracing, but you’re not at all chilled. And the baseball bat feels good in your hands. Solid and comforting as it rests on
your right shoulder.

You take a couple of practice swings to limber up and the
swish as the bat cuts through the air reminds you of a time long ago, of fall
and Legion baseball. And despite your better judgment, you’re going to enjoy what
happens next.

So people
ask me, they say, “Andy, what did you do it? What’s the point?”

I mean, I
wish I could tell you I did it for some worthy cause. Maybe pancreatic cancer
awareness, or to protest the kidnap and rape of little girls in Nigeria.

I didn’t.

Truth is,
I chose to go Black-and-White for strictly selfish reasons: I no
longer have to match my socks to my shoes, or my ties with my dress shirts.

Think
about it – no more worry, no more fuss. You just get up, pull together and
outfit and everything – I mean everything – matches.

My boyfriend
is still pretty miffed about it. I mean, he does fashion merchandising for a reputable mid-town department store, but
he’s just going to have to get over it. And I keep telling him, I keep saying,
“Nic, this is your big chance. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has merchandised to
the Black-and-White before. It’s all new territory, babe.”

* * *

OK,
technically I’m not Black-and-White. If you must know, I went Monochrome. I am,
to quote the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “a painting, drawing, or photograph in
a single hue.”

Except
that, yeah, I’m a human being. In shades of gray.

* * *

People
also ask me, they say, “Andy, what do you do about the stares you get on the
subway? What about work?”

Good
questions, really. At first, it didn’t bother me at all. The finger-pointing,
the looks, the whispers. I took it all in stride. But yeah, it got to be like,
whatever, people. I just popped in my ear buds and turned up the music. Slid on
my shades.

Work,
well, same thing, really. A slow burn I guess you’d call it.

I mean,
technically there’s a no-discrimination policy at the firm, but the partners
did their best to pressure me back into Colorization. I stood firm. I did. Told
them I appreciated their concern when they brought up that a client might not
want to be seen by a Monochrome, but I was quick to point out that it was a
personal choice (albeit for my own personal vanity) and it was my choice.
Please respect my wishes.

* * *

The day I
got my paycheck and it was light – and I mean light by a few hundred bucks –
was the day I knew my choice to be Monochrome meant more than not having to
match my socks to my shoes. That it was so much more than that.

I went to
payroll and asked what the heck was wrong and they said that there had been so
much uproar with the clients for my being Monochrome that it was decided to
dock my pay by using some sort of bullshit moral turpitude clause in the
employee handbook. OK, I said, no worries, I get it. I get that fact that a
Monochromatic man can’t make the same as Coloreds.

* * *

So, yeah,
with the help of Derrek in legal, we’re going to test the firm’s new-found bullshit
policy on the Monochromatic.

Thom Gabrukiewicz is both a communicator and a writer of flash fiction. Most of what he writes is kind of dark, with occasional forays into the light.
He’s a winner of some awards and has covered two Winter Olympics. He’s also written a guidebook about hiking with dogs.
He’s fiercely loyal and has a malevolent side that seems to visit less and less. He’s both a hopeless romantic and a realist.
He's currently working on community wellness issues in Wyoming.